A Study in Jelly Bellies.

These kids today!

Forget the violent video games, tonight I learned that children . . . THE CHILDREN, I TELL YOU! . . . are emulating one of the first and foremost killers of both the old Canon and the new Canon. And they don't even know they are doing it, being slowly trained in his deadly methodology without their knowing it by a corporate entity. If I was utterly paranoid and a Mormon, I would be quite concerned right now . . . quite concerned!

What am I talking about?

Well, you remember Jefferson Hope, don't you? The American avenger or the death-game cabbie who would present his victims with two pills, one harmless and one a deadly poison. And then he would let them choose . . . "You take one and I shall take one." A fifty-fifty chance of life or death! And somehow, Hope always seemed to come out on top, either proving his cause was blessed by some higher (or lower) power, or he was just one lucky son of St. Louis.

Now, the Jelly Belly company has come out with their Jelly Belly BeanBoozled line . While they previously came out with some very awful flavors in their Bertie Botts Any Flavor line based on the Harry Potter books, now they seem to be taking a page from A Study in Scarlet and matching those gag-worthy beans with tasty flavors in IDENTICAL beans.

Are you getting a tutti-frutti jelly bean, or a stinky socks bean?

Are you getting the classic buttered popcorn bean, or rotten egg flavor?

Suddenly, Jelly Belly has turned a generation into Jefferson Hopes, challenging their little friends to a starter-game of "Which pill is the poison?"

What's next? Nerf harpoons to aim at their little friends' chests?

Of course, the use by mature adults in a controlled Sherlockian gathering environment to experimentally simulate the Jefferson Hope murders for their own intellectual study . . . that could be a constructive use of these beans for higher purposes, and I would encourage students of Sherlock Holmes to do as much testing as possible upon their friends while these Study in Scarlet Jelly Bellies are still on the market.

"I could image his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid," Stamford once said of Sherlock Holmes, in explaining him to a pre-Sherlocked Watson, "not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of enquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects."

Having a friend try a new energy drink is doing that very thing (caffeine is an alkaloid), and jelly beans are much less dangerous than those devil's brews, so even if you're more of a Stamford than a Sherlock Holmes, your conscience might let you get away with such a test.

 If you are a mature adult of course. We don't need the kiddies getting any ideas for their future cab-driving careers.